“Then I asked if he wanted to smoke some dope with me.” (57) It might just be me ( I'd doubt it though) but when I read this line my head jerked back from the semi daze of monotony that I was fixated in while reading Raymond Carver's story. These few words suddenly changed the setting and overall vibe of the story (or at least as long as it took me to read them a second time and confirm that I was in fact reading the same story). With the injection of “dope”, instantly the story changed from one about the boring monotonous life of a forty something year old man and his wife, living in a suburb and possibly experiencing tension in their marriage because of a “blind man”, to one of personal adventures, risks and stretching of one’s comfort zone.
This shift in the story, catalyzed by the husband’s offer of dope is impossible to miss. Yet, it is the reason that Carver chose to insert it into the story that is so puzzling. I subscribe to a belief that in a short story, everything has a purpose. Even those who do not fully take this to heart must admit that the injection of marijuana into the story is in no way a small detail. I wonder why Carver found a need to put cannabis into his story: it seems as if it could have flown perfectly smoothly without. One explanation is that “dope” was simply used as a wow factor or “did I just read that line?” Though it is possible this was the case, I would hope that the reader’s attention and focus would not be wasted on a red herring. With this optimism, I venture to say that Carver used “dope” as a tool in two ways. First, it was a connection that Robert and the husband were able to share, the first such connection without the wife acting as a bridge. This connection allowed the husband to see Robert by himself, as a man, without having to see Robert in the context of Robert’s relationship with the husband’s wife. Once the husband’s jealousy was temporarily displaced, it paved the way for the two men to bond further in their forced attention to “The Cathedral”. Also Carver’s use of cannabis furthered the two men’s relationship because for the first time it was an experience/ activity that the narrator (husband) felt more experienced and knowledgeable about than Robert. Before the introduction of “dope”, the reader got the feeling that Robert was jealous because he felt inferior in the eyes of his wife to the blind man. Since it was Robert’s first time, the narrator instantly took on a more confident tone with his discovery of something that he did better than Robert. This confidence allowed the husband to put down his guard just long enough to truly befriend Robert.
Word count (486)
2 comments:
Elliot--did you post two blogs within hours of each other last week?
Anyway, about this one: I like the way you loo at the possible significance of such a detail, and I'll just add one more idea. It's possible that the scene in question functions also as an aspect of the stories realism, since the 1970's was a decade when marijuana use had gone from being limited to musicians and bohemians, to college students, and eventually more widely to blue-collar America, where it became for a time nearly as ubiquitous as beer in the refrigerator.
PS--you used "red herring" in your post, and used it correctly. Snaps to Elliot!
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